. The term “Gothic,” first derisively applied by Italian Renaissance writers, is still the accepted designation for the last phase of medieval art and architecture, lasting from ca. 1140 to ca. 1525. The period is usually divided into four parts, based (incorrectly) on the organic model of growth: Early Gothic (ca. 1140–95); High Gothic (ca. 1195–1225/30); Rayonnant (ca. 1225/ 30-ca. 1400); and Flamboyant (ca. 1400–1525).
The development of the Gothic style is usually analyzed in terms of specific elements, such as round or pointed arches, rib vaults, tribune galleries, wall passages and triforia, flying buttresses, elevations, and plans. More important than such constructional features, which can also be traced in Romanesque architecture, was the change in the way builders worked within their architectural vocabularies. Prior to the rebuilding of parts of the abbey of Saint-Denis beginning ca. 1140, builders generally borrowed features, more or less unchanged, from other building projects. Builders in the generations that followed Saint-Denis more and more integrated borrowed elements into the total design. It is the cognitive shift and the increasingly comprehensive design sense, together with the unified architectural space in which the parts are subsumed within the whole, that set Early Gothic apart from Romanesque. The change occurred as a series of experiments, not as an absolute solution. The surviving structures resist easy synthesis and suggest that we must appreciate the staggering variety of experimentation, the excitement of discovery, and the intellectual ferment that resulted in the extraordinary range of Early Gothic architecture; there are as many directions and trends as there are buildings. With the acceptance of a pluralistic approach, we move closer to the reality of the extraordinary variety that characterized the period.
“Early Gothic” is the generally accepted designation for the first phase of the French Gothic style, lasting from its beginning at Saint-Denis, ca. 1140, until the reconstruction of the cathedral of Notre-Dame of Chartres, begun in 1194. The Early Gothic style was initially confined to the areas in and around Paris and those under royal control but quickly lost its Parisian association with the Capetian kings. Architecture ceased to be a craft and became a discipline in the new chevet at Saint-Denis, dedicated in 1144. For the first time, medieval architecture became something other than the sum of a series of parts or sequence of units. The important conceptual shift in the thinking of the second builder at Saint-Denis is that for the first time he faced the challenge of creating an inner spaciousness that fused separate but contiguous units into a single architectural entity. The success of the east end of Saint-Denis lies in the creation and direct expression of a visual logic in the arrangement of every architectural element and a subordination of elements to the unified, total space. In the decade or so following the dedication of the east end of Saint-Denis in 1144, we can find a number of buildings that respond to it in a variety of ways. With few exceptions, the builders react as did builders of previous generations and borrow elements from Saint-Denis in random fashion or attempt to “copy” the east end as they understood it.
The other important achievement of this period is the cathedral of Sens, the first large-scale Gothic space. Detailed analysis of the north wall of the ambulatory at Sens permits us to observe many small changes in the design made during construction, all of them “responses” to Saint-Denis. Sens differs most from Saint-Denis in the large size and ambitious scale of its volumes. The visual logic of the east end of Saint-Denis is explored in varying degrees in other buildings started in the decade 1145–55, such as the cathedrals of Senlis and Noyon, and the new chevet of the abbey church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris.
The next decade is characterized by experiments in both size and scale, as well as explorations in the creation and application of the system of visual logic that Bony terms the “Gothic grid.” Chief among the surviving buildings are the cathedrals of Paris and Laon, four-story elevations that achieve both real and apparent height, respectively. Equally important were the two cathedrals of Cambrai and Arras, now destroyed, massive buildings in which many novel effects of design were explored. The decade also witnessed an increase in the adaptation of Romanesque structural features and solutions to the Gothic vocabulary.
Advanced thinking in the decade ca. 1165–75 is characterized by daring experiments in voiding the wall with
superposed passages and arcade screens, as in the transept arms of Noyon, the transept chapels at Laon, and the interior of the façade of Saint-Remi at Reims. The period ca. 1175–85 saw those experiments continued but usually on a more modest scale than at Paris or Cambrai, both of which were over 100 feet tall on the interior. Perhaps the most important change that took place in this decade was the systematic application of the flying buttress to the exteriors. The flying buttresses constructed at the lower level of the nave at Notre-Dame in Paris were the first examples to suggest the full potential of the feature. From the moment of their appearance, probably ca. 1175, they had a profound impact on builders and were quickly incorporated at such sites as Mantes, Saint-Remi at Reims, and Canterbury. The evidence suggests that they were added after the fact in a number of other cases, such as the nave at Laon. So profound was the impact of the flying buttress that other structural experimentation for all intents and purposes ceased. The decade ca. 1185–95 saw the continuation of the experiments of the previous de-cade and was again dominated by the flying buttress. The vocabulary of design solutions was broadened and made ever more complex through the sheer number of buildings, large and small, that were undertaken, but no major new features were introduced.
With the rebuilding of Chartres, begun after the fire of 1194, and of Bourges (ca. 1195), the lines of experimentation can be said to have reached two different but equally important ends. Chartres in particular is separated by scholars from Early Gothic and considered the beginning of a new stylistic trend, commonly called “High Gothic.” “High Gothic” is the term for what has long been considered the “classic” moment in French Gothic architecture, that series of cathedrals built in northern France between 1195 and ca. 1225/30. In English, the term carries the added connotation of height. By general agreement, High Gothic begins with the reconstruction of Chartres following the fire of 1194 and continues, for some, with Bourges, begun in 1195, or more often with Soissons, now thought to predate Chartres; then Reims, begun after the fire of 1208, followed by the nave of Amiens, begun by Robert de Luzarches 1218–20, and the chevet of Beauvais, begun ca. 1225.
One can argue with equal validity that Chartres, Bourges, and Soissons, along with others usually excluded, represent the final flowering and full variety of possible solutions available to builders after a half-century of extraordinary architectural experimentation. Bony has characterized Chartres as a radical simplification of ideas from a variety of earlier sources. The design of Soissons is another sort of simplification, but one still firmly rooted in previous experiments. In this line of reasoning, Bourges represents the ultimate complexity coming out of these same experiments. In short, all three are the continuation of Early Gothic experiments.
The importance of Chartres has been exaggerated, both because of its identification during the 19th century as the most sacred shrine of the Virgin in France and because of its proximity to Paris. Its stylistic impact is confined largely to Reims; but the latter’s importance as the source for the simplified three-story elevation incorporating bar-tracery windows and double tiers of flying buttresses topped by pinnacles is incontestable. As a solution, the design of Reims is less radical than those adopted at Chartres, Soissons, or Bourges. If it is recognized that the elements at Reims constituted refinements to existing techniques and designs, it, too, becomes the product of builders with full knowledge of previous experiments. The only “dislocation” concerns the cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais, both of which, but most especially Amiens, are usually included in the “High Gothic” canon. If we recognize, however, that both designs exhibit significant shifts in interest from those of Chartres, Soissons, Bourges, and Reims, even while being influenced by them, then the realization that both herald the new decorative complexity of the Rayonnant becomes possible. Such a reorganization does not privilege them over later Rayonnant solutions any more than over such precedents as Reims; rather, it restores to them a measure of originality.
Thus, it is time to question the whole concept of “High Gothic” and to discard both the deterministic models and concepts of stylistic development based on organic mod els, as well as value judgments that privilege one aspect of a style above another. The continued use of the construct prejudices an understanding of the Rayonnant as a distinct and independent architectural development based on different values. If we discard the notion of the classic moment of the Gothic style in favor of an understanding of early 13th-century buildings continuing the rich tradition of experimentation, then structures previously relegated to the sidelines and excluded from the “High Gothic” assume their places as varied accomplishments in their own right.
Like most stylistic terms, even “Gothic” itself, “Rayonnant” is a misnomer. Chosen in the 19th century because the rose window was seen as typifying the style, it has come to stand for the new direction in Gothic architecture that manifests itself ca. 1225–30. Rayonnant is the result of a variety of experiments that seem to crystallize in and around Paris, but they would not have been possible without knowledge of comparable experiments at Amiens, Troyes, Saint-Nicaise at Reims, and even Royaumont. The Rayonnant is characterized by a new exploration of the applications of geometry in the design of window tracery and the systematic application of the principles of window-tracery design to the entire building, inside and out. Since the design principles are derived from the elegant screens of window tracery, the emphasis is linear and flat, with a sense of apparent fragility and brittleness, together with an incisive analytical elegance. The fragility of window tracery is nevertheless an illusion that results from its linear qualities and thinness: these thin screens of ornament have withstood countless storms since their creation.
The linear complexity leads to an abrupt and systematic change of emphasis. All of the ornament is on these thin screens of tracery; all forms of plasticity are rejected. The compound piers of Reims and Chartres become the attenuated linear piers of the nave of Saint-Denis. The linear value of the piers runs up the wall, every layer of which receives the same unified treatment of incisively carved yet delicate ornament. The substantial wall structures of previous generations have disintegrated into layers of the thinnest possible tracery. Even wall passages cease to convey depth, because their two surfaces are sharply delineated units of surface pattern superimposed in front of one another. Density and mass even disappear on the exterior, as all surfaces are covered with elegant tracery or thinned down by sheets of tracery gables. The buildings become thin, elegant, elongated, and miraculously insubstantial, as at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris or Saint-Urbain at Troyes. The patterns are rational, logical, and neat—ceaseless explorations of the almost infinite number of possible patterns to be derived from experiments with the geometry of circles, squares, and triangles. Design becomes a logical process in which a series of similar patterns may be repeated and manipulated through a variety of sizes and scales.
In addition to the extraordinary facility of design found in the Rayonnant, other factors must be considered. The development of elaborate patterns of tracery ornament in the later 1220s and 1230s is matched by a decrease in the size and scale of the buildings, which serves to make the patterns visible, just as the broad double aisles and pyramidal elevations of buildings like Paris and Bourges are abandoned in favor of simpler, more concentrated plans that allow the outer windows to be brought closer to the central space. The result is greater light on the interior from larger windows filled with more complex tracery patterns. The period reveals an almost quantum leap forward in the handling of design complexities, as well as in the carving of complex, multifaceted pieces that make up the tracery puzzle. There is a marked preference for hard, fine-grained limestone that lends itself to fine carving, and we can speculate that there must also have been an explosive development in the production of tools capable of producing the detail demanded. Lastly, there are the economic considerations.
Beginning in the mid-1220s, western Europe entered what is termed a “Little Ice Age,” when temperatures yearround grew noticeably colder. Lower temperatures wreaked havoc on agriculture, particularly in northern France, where wine production, heretofore a major industry, practically disappeared. Only the cloth-producing towns in the north escaped economic disaster. In this economic climate, it is important to note that, for all of the complexity of tracery and richness of pattern, a building in the “Rayonnant” style actually requires less stone for construction than an Early Gothic building. The difference becomes clear, for example, if we compare a cross-section and elevation of the nave of Saint-Denis with those of Laon. Although the height of Laon is about 80 percent that of Saint-Denis, the nave of Saint-Denis required only about one-third the stone needed to construct a comparable area at Laon. In addition, the Rayonnant structure seems not only lighter and more open but achieves a greater sense of spatial mystery and illusion.
The Rayonnant period also witnessed a shrinking in scale and complexity that not only reflects the economic realities but serves to make the design itself more visible. And some of the designs were becoming, if less complex, hardly less elegant. The church of Saint-Martin-aux-Bois, for example, has a much simpler and more concentrated plan without an elaborate chevet but uses tall, thin windows surrounded by large areas of masonry. Still, through a skillful juxtaposition of height and narrowness, the builder achieved an elegance of statement. The innumerable Franciscan and Dominican churches of the later 13th and succeeding centuries will use these same principles of design. Their compact preaching halls will eschew elaborate chevet plans in favor of simple apses and will have tall, thin windows in large wall surfaces.
Another important aspect of the Rayonnant is the development of distinctive regional styles, both as a reflection of the creative possibilites inherent in the tracery patterns and as a return to structural systems typical of particular areas. It was common in Normandy, for example, to find wall passages in front of the clerestory windows, as in the Norman Gothic chevets at Bayeux and Coutances or in the church at Norrey. But wall passages in front of clerestory windows were even more common in Norman Romanesque churches from Cerisy-la-Forêt and Saint-Étienne at Caen, as well as in occasional Early Gothic buildings like La Trinité at Fécamp. As was the case in other areas,
Elevation and nave section of Saint-Denis. After Dehio.
Elevation and nave section of Laon cathedral. After Dehio.
the traditional structural systems of Romanesque Normandy were updated in the Rayonnant Gothic and outfitted with elaborate tracery patterns in the windows and wall-passage screens to create the distinctive Norman Gothic style.
A similar interest in older structural systems updated and sheathed in complex tracery patterns characterizes the regional styles of Burgundy and Champagne. One thinks of the superposed passages of the apse of Saint-Amand-sur-Fion, which must be a reflection of the design complexity of Saint-Nicaise at Reims, which in turn picks up the lower-level passage in front of windows seen at both Saint-Remi and the cathedral of Reims. Likewise, in Burgundy the distinctive regional variant of Rayonnant Gothic usually includes passages in association with windows, as at Auxerre cathedral, Notre-Dame at Dijon, and the elegant church at Semur-en-Auxois.
In the south, the Romanesque single-nave tradition of Languedoc provided the inspiration for comparable Gothic spatial experiments at Toulouse cathedral, among others. And some of the Angevin experiments with single naves and complex, domed vaults culminates in the extraordinary lightness and openness of Saint-Serge at Angers and Candes, among others, in this particularly experimental region. In short, the regional styles all seem to have more to do with updating older traditions in a climate that favored experimentation in structure and design than with creating styles in reaction to what was emanating from the royal domain.
Discarding the outmoded concept of “High Gothic” and reevaluating Rayonnant Gothic as an equally valid but different approach to design and decoration also permits us to rethink the assessments of previous generations with regard to the last phase of the Gothic style, called “Flamboyant” after the elegant reverse curves used in window tracery that produces patterns resembling tongues of flame. Past generations tended to dismiss the Flamboyant as “decadent” or “baroque.” To do so fails to recognize two important aspects of Late Gothic. First, the Flamboyant exists side-by-side with the now conservative Rayonnant. In other words, the Flamboyant is a logical outgrowth of Rayonnant tracery patterns, an outgrowth that does not replace the older patterns but exists with them. More important, in the hands of talented builders the Flamboyant became the means to expand the limits of Gothic illusionism and to question the very tenets of architectural design.
The Hundred Years’ War drained the French economy at every level. With resources stretched thin, building activity practically ceased. Many projects were abandoned or languished until the recovery in the late 15th century. Flamboyant tracery patterns began to appear in the last decades of the 14th century, but the major monuments would be created only after the end of the war and would be built in those areas most devastated by battles: Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, the western valley of the Loire, and Normandy, as well as in Paris itself.
The most identifiable aspect of Flamboyant Gothic is the ogee, or reverse-curve, arch, which first appeared simply as one more variant in the rich Rayonnant vocabulary. But by the 15th-century recovery, the patterns had grown more complex and had begun to be used to impart a sense of dynamics to the lines of the buildings. The ogee arch and the resulting tracery patterns are used to define the style not only because they are so immediately identifiable but because they create a sense of continuous, sinuous movement across the window tracery or around the portals. This dynamism spread to the patterns of vault ribs and even to the design of piers. Abandoning the traditional visual and design limits imposed by the presence of bases and capitals, as well as the volumetrics resulting from colonnettes, the pier could become something dynamic in design with a plan of delicate scallops. The thin vertical lines swirl upward, twisting dramatically and seeming wildly to sprout vault ribs, as in the ambulatory of Saint-Séverin in Paris.
This extraordinary visual fantasy at the same time is accompanied by the increasingly “realistic” depiction of flora and fauna seemingly copied from nature. Already present in the decoration of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, this tendency flourished in the 15th century with the creation of designs based on ever more specific fruits, vegetables, and foliage now filled with exotic and monstrous animals whose realistic treatment belies their fantastic origins. The element of fantasy pervades architecture. In this new order, the transept gables of Notre-Dame at Paris become the dissolving openwork screens of Louviers or the façade of Saint-Maclou at Rouen. Visual limits are challenged by illusionary effects, piers without bases or capitals, vault ribs that sprout from walls, scatter across vaults like unchecked foliage and abruptly vanish into other ribs, piers, and walls.
Architectural space becomes more unified into total volumes but also more visionary and illusionistic. In eastern France and in Champagne, this was achieved by using the hall-church scheme with aisles equal or nearly equal in height to the main nave. But the illusionism might also rely on the tall, narrow proportions found in the Rayonnant, a design favored in Parisian churches. The Rayonnant visual linkage of upper zones that suggested a two-storied elevation became reality in such buildings as Notre-Dame at Cléry (1429–85), a royal church on the Loire, and later in Saint-Gervais (1494–1502) and Saint-Étienne du Mont in Paris (after 1494). Moulins cathedral, formerly a collegial church founded in 1468 for the dukes of Bourbon, repeats this Parisian scheme. In Normandy, the traditional three-story elevation is maintained, but the treatment of the second story as a tracery screen obscures its role as the front of a wall passage, as at Caudebec-en-Caux, Saint-Maclou at Rouen, or the new chevet of Mont-Saint-Michel. The extraordinary illusionism that redefines architectural space is not only international (Prague cathedral was begun by a French architect-builder, Matthew d’Arras), but resulted in a number of striking architectural fantasies: Notre-Dame at Cléry (patroned by Louis XI after 1467 and practically made into his private chapel); the church of Brou (1513–32), reflecting the intense love and devotion of Marguerite of Austria for her short-lived marriage to Philibert of Savoy; the pilgrimage church of Notre-Dame de l’Épine in Champagne (in the works in the 1440s); Saint-Pol-de-Léon (begun in 1429); and the rebuilding of Nantes cathedral (begun in 1434). The Flamboyant is the most neglected period of Gothic architecture because of the prejudices of past generations; but the neglect of these highly original and inventive architectural fantasies is unwarranted. The time has come to discard old conceptions and look anew at Late Gothic architecture.
